Trailblazing Women of Australian Public Broadcasting, 1945–1975

By Kylie Andrews

Trailblazing women of Australian Public Broadcasting, 1945 – 1975 offers a compelling new perspective of Australian radio and television history. It chronicles how a group of female producers defied the odds and forged remarkable careers in the traditionally male domain of public-affairs production at the ABC in the post-war decades. Kay Kinane, Catherine King, Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage were ambitious and resourceful producers, part of the vanguard of Australian broadcasters who used mass media as a vehicle for their social and political activism. Fiercely dedicated to their audiences, they wrote, directed and produced ground-breaking documentaries and current affairs programs that celebrated Australian life, while also challenging its cultural complacency, its racism and sexism. They immersed themselves in the ABC’s many networks of collaboration and initiated a range of strategies to expand their agency and authority. With vivid descriptions of life at the ABC, this book traces their careers as they crossed borders and crossed mediums, following them as they worked on location shoots and in production offices, in television studios, control rooms and radio booths. In doing so it highlights the barriers, both official and unofficial, that confronted so many women working in broadcasting after World War II.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839982590

Book preview

PREFACE

When I started writing this book, I had never heard of Kay Kinane, Catherine King, Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage. Before becoming a historian, I worked for more than a dozen years in media production and, like so many of my female colleagues, was unaware of the achievements and efforts of my trailblazing predecessors. A few years ago, I was talking to one of Australia’s leading film producers – a woman who started her career at the ABC in the 1970s – and asked if she had been inspired by any of the earlier generations of radio and television producers. She confessed she had never heard of them. Why have women been so absent in histories of media production? In the post-war decades, Australian broadcasting expanded into an increasingly complex and diverse industry, requiring a variety of workers and specialists. Surely, women workers made substantial contributions? The journey for this book began with a search to discover if the lack of women in Australian media history was, in fact, an accurate representation of their actual contributions over the decades. I discovered that for much of the twentieth century, Australia’s media histories often ignore the contributions of women behind the scenes. As film scholar Annette Blonski lamented, ‘so much of our history exists merely as footnotes to accounts of the exploits of famous men’.¹

Early in my research, I came across ABC commentator Ellis Blain’s 1977 memoir, Life with Aunty: Forty Years with the ABC. In the opening paragraph, Blain wrote, ‘Talking to some of the men who have shaped the ABC of today soon convinced me that I had been wise to avoid a commitment to a history in depth. Many of those who should have contributed to such an enterprise are already dead, and some of those who are alive make no secret of their determination that the mistakes, politics and intrigues will continue to rest in peace.’² When I read this, I was immediately struck by Blain’s determination that it was men who built the ABC. I was also disconcerted by the preferred practice of ‘forgetting’ uncomfortable aspects of the past. It was a timely reminder of the need to revise the limited historical narratives which selectively celebrate the good and ignore the more complex aspects of an organisation’s history, even one as well-intentioned as the ABC. This book celebrates women’s contributions to Australian broadcasting and the important role public broadcasting has played in Australia.

Thankfully, more historians are remedying what Michele Hilmes identified as the ‘blind spot of gender in broadcasting’; working to ‘exhume’ women from ‘historical neglect’ and resuscitating their contributions as producers of content.³ Despite the fact that so many were invisible in traditional broadcasting histories, I soon discovered numerous instances of female ambition and agency; women who, in a multitude of ways, contributed to the development of Australian public broadcasting in the decades after World War II. This book functions as a women’s history as well as a feminist history. It performs an act of recovery, working to remedy the deficit of histories featuring Australian women broadcasters. It also reimagines the nature of women’s work at the ABC and revises historical narratives that privilege male broadcasters. By reclaiming the careers of women like these dynamic producers, we can view Australian public broadcasting with a fresh perspective, a woman’s perspective.

Many people provided me with assistance and inspiration as I wrote this book. I am most grateful to Paula Hamilton and Paul Ashton for their guidance and encouragement. I would also like to thank the team at the Centre for Public History and the generous community of historians and media scholars who welcomed me. A special vote of thanks goes to Bridget Griffen-Foley, Zora Simic, Jeannine Baker, Liz Giuffre and Peter Cochrane. The Australian Historical Association and the Australian Copyright Agency also provided me with invaluable assistance; their support for early career researchers like myself has been wonderful.

This history would not have been possible without the support of the University of Technology, Sydney, via a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Scholarship and an Australian Government Research Training Programme Scholarship. I am also grateful to have been endowed with the 2018 Clare Burton Award, through the Australian Technology Network of Universities. I was inspired by Clare’s legacy to encourage gender equity and improve the lives of working women. I have received assistance from both The Australian Academy of Humanities and the International Australian Studies Association, many thanks for your support.

I would like to thank the archivists who were so generous with their time. Special thanks go to the National Archive of Australia’s Judith Paterson and Edmund Rutledge. I am indebted to the marvellous people at the ABC, especially Guy Tranter and Janine Crichley. Many thanks to Graham Shirley for permitting me to utilize his collection of interviews with Australian broadcasters and filmmakers. Thanks also to the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Library of Australia, the British Film Institute, the BBC Written Archives Centre and the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University.

During the course of this research project, I met wonderful contributors who kindly agreed to be interviewed. I want to offer my deep gratitude to Bill Denny, Mary Kenihan, Marie Louise Persson, Pauline Thomas, Theo van Leeuwen, Mary Rossi, Emma Rossi and John Challis. I would also like to thank Bob Sitsky and Col McPherson, who invited me to spend time with their inspiring family of ABC ex-staffers. Thank you all for so generously sharing your memories with me.

I have also been blessed in having wonderful family and friends who have encouraged me on this journey, to Lisa, Rosa and Cathy, my special thanks. Finally, I would like to thank Nick, Elisabeth and Jacob, my patient and loving family, for their unceasing support and inspiration.

This book is dedicated to the many determined women of the ABC who battled to forge careers in broadcasting.

Notes

1 Annette Blonski, Barbra Creed and Freda Freiberg, Don’t Shoot Darling! Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia (Richmond: Greenhouse, 1987), iv.

2 Ellis Blain, Life with Aunty: Forty Years with the ABC (Sydney: Methuen of Australia, 1977), vii–viii.

3 Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), xx, 131.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Showrunners, Shot Callers and Flying Typewriters

In April 1963, television producer Joyce Belfrage ended her four-year term at the ABC with a mighty crash. Having heard that Assistant General Manager Clem Semmler and the Television Producer’s Assessment Committee were demoting her for a second time, she had had enough. Fuelled with rage for the unjust treatment she felt she had received at the hands of ‘pedantic’, ‘po-faced’ bureaucrats, Joyce left her Forbes Street office to drown her sorrows and think on her dilemma. She was torn between her loyalty to the organization’s public service ideals and a growing vexation with the compromised production cultures that arose during the ABC’s difficult transition to television. Returning to her office, Joyce stalked past her secretary and loudly declared she was finally ‘fed up’. Spotting the defective typewriter she had long been asking to have replaced, her frustrations spilled over. Joyce pulled down the cumbersome machine and heaved it out the window. Gloriously smashing onto the laneway below, it was a bitter reminder of her unrequited appeals for better conditions and the progressive diminution of her authority. In a final act of defiance, she took out her new crimson lipstick and scrawled a large, expletive-laden farewell to the ABC on the wall. ‘There, that looks better now’, she declared, and began to pack her things.¹

Not long after Joyce’s rebellious departure, another female television producer was disrupting the status quo at the ABC. In 1963, Therése Denny returned from a long sojourn at the BBC. A highly regarded television producer, her agenda was to produce a series of documentary critiques of Australian society and culture. As one of the few producers invited to join the exclusive exchange programme between the two broadcasters, Therése Denny was a very different person from the inexperienced young woman who left the ABC in 1949, exasperated by the constant rejection of her requests to produce. Returning forewarned and forearmed, Therése used her BBC status ‘to sustain her authority within a production workplace that she knew to be insular, insecure and resistant to women in authority’.² The conspicuous combination of her expertise and her gender proved troubling for many in the ABC establishment and many programmers were concerned about Therése’s disruptive confidence. One senior officer complained: ‘I have a sneaking suspicion that we may have some trouble with this dame, she will probably hound us to death.’³

A little over a decade earlier, the ABC’s longest serving and most accomplished producer of ‘women’s programming’, Catherine King, was blazing trails in a different way. Repudiating the notion that programming for female audiences should inhabit a demarcated space, her aim as a Women’s Session showrunner was to create a show where ‘people’ listened, not just women.⁴ Speaking at a university women’s conference in Tasmania in 1950, Catherine asserted that it was ‘ridiculous’ to think women did not share the same sociopolitical concerns as men: ‘Broadcasting is good or bad broadcasting by standards which have nothing to do with sex, and the sooner the idea that women have a specialized set of interests and are incapable of wider ones, is exploded, the better it will be.’⁵ Catherine produced her late-morning sessions for more than 20 years, manifesting a welcoming intellectual generosity that deeply resonated with her listeners. Highlighting the ABC’s paradoxical approach to women in the post-war era, Catherine was widely celebrated as one of the ABC’s exemplary broadcasters and yet, her stubborn insistence on breaking the boundaries of ‘women’s issues’ caused a great deal of concern amongst senior programme officers.

In 1955, as the ABC prepared for the onset of television, Kay Kinane was formulating her own strategies to master the exciting new medium and set her sights on the American market. As Federal Script Editor and Producer of Youth Education, she was the most senior woman working at the ABC. Kay was passionate about education and believed public broadcasting was a powerful site through which one could greatly facilitate learning. With her expertise as both an educator and an award-winning radio producer, Kay was well positioned to embrace the technical innovations that this new wonder of television offered, and she cherished her time training and working with a diverse community of public broadcasters during her trip around the United States. Learning how to harness the chaos of live television, Kay found the pressured dynamic of studios and control rooms thrilling:

[…] which was great fun because we worked like Trojans! […] We worked! From breakfast until 10 or 11 at night we were on the go. It was very different from the BBC tempo. Rudy Bretz and Ed Stasheff were running it. We’d known their names from books they’d written. They, when some of the participants were having nervous collapses in the corner and weep and say they couldn’t do it, they’d rub their hands together and say, ‘Great school, great school! Stress is beginning to build up!’ [Laughing]. But it was good. It was very interesting and gave me a feeling that I could look at four different places at once and the script and something else, which I think is the key to television really, you’ve got to be aware of so many different things.⁶

In-between operating cameras and preparing shooting scripts, Kay provided key insights on production procedures and logistics for the ABC. She also assessed programme acquisitions for the public broadcaster’s embryonic network. On her return, she became a founding member of the ABC’s television training school.⁷ Relishing the chance to share her new knowledge, Kay insisted that programming officers and administrators, regardless of their seniority, undergo training to gain a better understanding of the demands of the new medium, thinking this may help resolve the problems that would inevitably arise when the ABC’s radio-centric programme officers were tasked to manage television. At times, to the dismay of many producers, Kay’s lessons were not always remembered.

These anecdotes offer a brief introduction to four of the ABC’s most senior female producers of the post-war decades. These women wrote, directed and produced ground-breaking radio and television, each disrupting the status quo in their own way. Some attained rare positions of seniority within the male arena of public-affairs programming, while others fought to expand the parameters of women’s content and challenged the trivialization of ‘women’s issues’. As showrunners, they created and directed; they determined programme agendas and conceptual and creative rationales, and like so many dedicated broadcasters, constantly battled to sustain the integrity of their projects. As shot callers, they unleashed their vision with a formidable creative, technical and industrial expertise; they produced innovative current-affairs programming that critiqued the social, cultural and political complacencies of post-war Australia. They were ambitious and resourceful, pursuing careers as authoritative broadcasters at a time when most women were constrained to domestic lives.

In order to reclaim these women and their peers from historical obscurity, it was first necessary to construct a gender map of the post-war ABC. All manner of ABC histories were searched for women’s names, from memoirs and biographies to annual reports, management reports, wage policy papers, contracts and performance reviews. It was then possible to align these female broadcasters to programming specialties and contextualize their status in post-war production hierarchies. A preliminary list of eminent ABC women included: commissioners Ivy Kent, Dame Enid Lyons, Elsie Blythe and Rhoda Felgate; radio presenters and producers Lorna (Byrne) Hayter, Norma Ferris, Mary Rossi, Catherine King and Ida Elizabeth Osbourne; television producers Margaret Delves, Joyce Belfrage and Therése Denny; producers and programme officers Clare Mitchell, Ruth Stirling, Dorothy Crawford, Betty Parsons and Kay Kinane; dramatist Gwen Meredith; publicity officer Bonnie McCallum; lawyer Joyce Shrewcroft; audience researcher Nancy Sheehan; technical manager Flora Cameron; and executive secretary Betty Cook. It became apparent that in the post-war decades, one of the most difficult positions for a woman to attain was as a public-affairs producer. What motivated these women to become outspoken public broadcasters and how did they manage to overcome the obstacles in their way?

The ABC was a dominant force in the construction and reflection of national discourses; it was seen as ‘an oasis in a cultural desert’, an entity that could help remedy the cultural malaise that dominated Australia during the 1950s and 1960s.⁸ The ABC employed a community of producers and programmers who imagined themselves as the nation’s cultural custodians.⁹ They were people historian Richard White described as a community of ‘intelligentsia’, a community that recognized broadcasting as a powerful mechanism to shape national identity.¹⁰ They saw themselves as capable and culturally superior and felt confident to speak for others and make judgements about what was best for society.

Kay Kinane, Catherine King, Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage produced radio and television at a time when the ABC was reshaping and redefining its stance on crucial issues such as gender, race and national identity. They were steadfast in their vocation to use public broadcasting to promote an engaged and connected citizenship, to celebrate and foster learning, culture and community. The ABC was a locus of privilege at a time of great social, cultural and technological change and with its remit to inform, educate and entertain, it inevitably became a preferred venue for the women’s activism. Fiercely dedicated to their audiences, they created programmes that celebrated Australian life while also challenging its parochialism and cultural complacency, its racism and sexism, at times with shameless audacity. They also experienced key events and movements in radio and television history, both within the ABC and in the wider international community.

Kay, Catherine, Therése and Joyce all managed to attain positions of authority within that ‘oasis’ of public broadcasting. It helped that they conformed to key characteristics common at the organisation at the time. The post-war ABC’s programme and production departments were dominated by white, highly educated, middle-class workers. Gender proved to be the key obstacle for this cohort of professional women. Mobility, ingenuity and diplomacy were crucial factors in their success, as was their canny manipulation of industrial dynamics. Using the ABC as a transnational conduit, they strategically immersed themselves in the dynamic channels and flows of broadcasting’s global networks. Undertaking transformative departures, they joined stimulating and supportive communities of like-minded people and in doing so, found new ways to live, work and love.

In 1965, ABC producer and programme officer Mungo MacCallum wrote an article for Nation magazine titled ‘This Band of Sisters’, in which he lamented how Australian broadcasting, and society in general, manifested an aversion to women speaking and acting with authority. He recognized how his female peers were seen as unwelcome interlopers, particularly in prime-time and current-affairs television. MacCallum described these talented women as mission-oriented ‘pilgrims’, adventurers who had to work hard to overcome the obstacles put in their path. Their ‘Mecca’ was a broadcasting culture where gender was not an issue:

In and out of television, consciously or not, the Australian male tends to regard the woman of authority as some sort of mutant […] Less, far less than other countries do we put sex aside when we hear the voice of authority […] Miss Denny would be the first to agree that had she been Mr Denny ABC officials would have breathed less deeply […] The fact is that, though they may love or need them, Australian men don’t like women.¹¹

MacCallum went on to commend the new breed of broadcasting women on their professionalism and pointed to the lengths they had to go to in order to sustain their careers:

The little band of female pilgrims is strung out on the road to Mecca, scattered by differing talents, preferences and opportunities […] Some of the band work both behind and in front of the camera; more, like Miss Denny, behind it. But even female producers are few. A significant fact is the high proportion of women in serious (not solemn) television who started with the ABC and left it, to realize their potential elsewhere.¹²

MacCallum’s insight from 1965 encapsulates the key issues facing women working in Australia’s post-war media landscape. Female broadcasters eager to contribute to national debates had to overcome traditional gender constructs that were systematically applied to exclude them from prime roles. They found it necessary to instigate industrial strategies to survive and advance and many were forced to move beyond the local sphere to improve their status and knowledge, engaging with transnational broadcasting cultures and networks. Ultimately, while the post-war ABC sought to be a democratic, enlightened organization (with supportive male executives like MacCallum), it was nevertheless encumbered by social conventions that privileged male identity and justified male authority, reinforcing the sexual division of labour and allowing both jobs and content to be gendered.

Kay Kinane, Catherine King, Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage defied the odds and forged remarkable careers in the traditionally male world of public broadcasting. In the process, they made their own valuable contributions to the development of radio and television in Australia. One was awarded an MBE, praised for her advocacy and humanitarianism, invited to Buckingham Palace to dine with the royal family; another travelled around the world as an industry ambassador and advisor, tasked to help developing nations establish their own broadcasting networks; one faced cancer with an impertinent and steely resolve, determined to work throughout her illness and continue to create documentaries for distribution throughout the British broadcasting empire; and another, despite gradually losing her sight, continued to ‘stir up trouble’ while teaching new generations of media practitioners, being investigated by ASIO in the process. Throughout their careers, these women manifested a focused determination to pursue their passion for broadcasting and to contribute, improve and enlighten the world around them.

Notes

1 Joyce Belfrage, interviewed by Graham Shirley, 20 July 2001. NFSA, ref: 535333.

2 Kylie Andrews, ‘Broadcasting inclusion and advocacy: A history of female activism and cross-cultural partnership at the post-war ABC’, Media International Australia , 174, no. 1 (2019): 101.

3 Memo from Neil Edwards to ABC Film Production Services, 29 October 1963, titled Talks Documentaries , Australian Broadcasting Commission. NAA, SP1299/2 BC:3161668.

4 Catherine King, ABC 50th Anniversary , 1 July 1982, 6WF ABC Radio, State Library of Western Australia, OH572-18181211.

5 Catherine King, ‘Speech to Conference of University Women’, Hobart, 1950, quoted in Julie Lewis, On Air: The Story of Catherine King and the ABC Women’s Session (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1979), 49.

6 Kay Kinane, City Extra , 23 June 1982, ABC Radio. NAA, S:C100 CS:88/10/1358M BC:11615731.

7 At St Peter’s Hall in Kings Cross, Kay and Mungo MacCallum were seconded from their regular departments and assigned to teach at the Training School. Kay said ‘Mungo and I tossed to see which one would produce and which one would be FM. And Mungo got the toss.’ MacCallum focused on floor managing, Kay the control room. (See Kay Kinane, interviewed by Emma Rossi, 4 August 1995, Northwood, Sydney. Emma Rossi Private Archive.)

8 Brian Shoesmith, ‘Ken Inglis’ This is the ABC’, Australian Journal of Cultural Studies , 4, no. 1 (1986): 129.

9 Memo from ABC Senior Officer’s Association Executive Subcommittee to Staff Members, 26 May 1972, titled Paper for Presentation to the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science and the Arts by the Senior Officers Association of the Australian Broadcasting Commission , Australian Broadcasting Commission. NLA: 2707416.

10 Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688–1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1981), ix.

11 Mungo MacCallum, ‘This band of sisters’, Nation , 26 June 1965, 15.

12 Ibid.

Chapter 2

CAREER SNAPSHOTS

Kay Kinane

Figure 2.1 Miss Kay Kinane, May 1938.

State Library of WA, 304567PD.

We wanted […] to say, look, the world’s a wonderful place, c’mon!’ That’s why we’d get psychology lecturers, we’d get people from university talking about career paths for women, we’d get anything at all that led to showing what we felt about the world, that it was worth all of us becoming and passing on, the things we’d found out about living. Because it was a wonderful place to be.¹

Tall and imposing with a calm, sonorous voice, Kay Kinane was unafraid to roll up her sleeves and leap into the middle of the action, whether directing live broadcasts, inspecting migrant camps in post-war Germany or riding a motorbike in the Outback. In 1944, she was recognized for her innovative approach to producing educational content and became the first woman to lead an ABC state department as a Supervisor of Schools Broadcasting. Four years later she was promoted again, this time to a national position as Federal Script Editor (Education). Kay Kinane produced hundreds of radio projects in the first phase of her broadcasting career, including numerous adult education programmes, radio for migrants and scores of educational shows for children, such as the celebrated narrative series, The Days of Good Queen Bess (1948)² and the 12-part environmental history The World We Live In (1955).³ In 1956, after helping set up the ABC’s television training school, Kay agreed to be the first showrunner of Woman’s World where she and host Mary Rossi pushed the boundaries of what were determined to be ‘women’s interests’ on television. Woman’s World addressed a diverse range of issues; in one week the show might celebrate the wonders of the classical world, present comedy performances and give book reviews, and in another demonstrate basic carpentry for housewives, discuss the plight of single mothers and teach parents how to diagnose dyslexia.⁴

Kay Kinane eventually returned to educational broadcasting and attained one female-first role after another. She played a key part in the formation of national educational broadcast policy and practice. She was promoted to Assistant Director of the national department in 1964, and was subsequently elevated to the rank of Federal Supervisor of Young People’s Programmes in 1968.⁵ Kay had always been an active international representative of the ABC and throughout the 1960s and 1970s became a highly regarded broadcasting advisor and ambassador, consulting for major organisations such as UNESCO and the European Broadcasting Union. Kay travelled throughout South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa and provided expert advice on how best to develop educational broadcasting. She worked within the Colombo Plan and assisted various countries formulate foundational initiatives for national broadcasting systems. Kay also worked on women’s education initiatives for developing nations and encouraged the work of their fledgling filmmakers and broadcasters.

Kay Kinane’s belief in the importance of education was a fundamental force driving her broadcasting career. She developed a special talent for adapting media formats for educational purposes and believed innovative radio and television were powerful tools to enhance the learning ability of audiences. It was fairly early in her career when Kay had an epiphany regarding her approach to shaping content. For 10 steamy weeks in the summer of 1951, she escorted a production and logistics crew on a journey down the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers, re-enacting the Sturt and Macleay expedition of 1829. The landmark event provided the ABC with the opportunity to flex its cultural muscles and test its new distribution networks. Broadcast each weeknight, The Sturt Report captured the events of each